Consumer Perspectives on Trust in and Benefits of Artificial Intelligence in Health Care.

Menopause is a natural and inevitable part of life for individuals born with ovaries. Despite its universality, menopause remains a life phase often surrounded by ignorance, misconceptions, and a lack of adequate support from healthcare systems. For many, it involves a complex interplay of physical, emotional, and social changes that may significantly impact women’s overall quality of life, social relationships and working life. This study uses the word menopause broadly, encompassing the stages of perimenopause, menopause, and postmenopause, unless otherwise specified. Perimenopause, with its hormonal fluctuations leading up to menopause, typically lasts 4–7 years, though hormonal changes associated with reproductive aging may begin up to a decade before the final menstrual period. The median age at menopause in high-income countries is 52 years, with a normal range of 45–55 years. Given this variability, women at the lower end of the normal range may begin experiencing hormonal changes as early as their mid-thirties. While acknowledging that not all individuals experiencing menopause identify as women, the term ‘women’ is used throughout this text since many going through menopause identify as such. In 2021, the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare identified knowledge gaps among women as well as among healthcare professionals. They also identified geographical and educational differences in access to care. The consequences of these gaps include delayed care-seeking and underutilization of effective therapies. In response to these gaps, a Swedish research team has initiated a doctoral project that seeks to map women’s knowledge, attitudes, and access to care during the menopausal transition entitled The overarching goal of the doctoral project is to improve conditions for individualized and equitable menopausal care, using the concept of informed choice as a central analytical framework guiding the project’s design and research questions. Healthcare in Sweden is obliged to provide person-centered care and inform the patient about the best available care options to enable for the patient to make informed choices. The concept of informed choice originated in midwifery feminist research; midwives and their clients took the view that when women understand their own bodies and their clinical options, they could make informed choices about their care regarding pregnancy and birth. The concept consists of three equally important dimensions: access to knowledge, easy access to healthcare and treatment, and freedom from myths, stigmas, and misinformation. These dimensions are highly relevant in the context of menopause and menopausal hormone therapy (MHT), where persistent concerns, particularly the fear of breast cancer following the WHI study, continue to shape public and professional attitudes. Health literacy is a central precondition for informed choice. Sorensen et al. describe health literacy as the knowledge, motivation, and competencies needed to access, understand, appraise, and apply health information. This framework aligns closely with the dimensions of informed choice, which require individuals to be able to locate information, understand it, and evaluate their options. Although “menopausal health literacy” is not yet a broadly established concept, work on menstrual health literacy may illustrate relevant challenges. Critchley et al. identify structural issues such as stigma, normalization of pain, and inconsistent terminology, all of which hindered menstrual health literacy, comprehension, communication and positive healthcare encounters.